Treviso Geography

Treviso lies on the flat alluvial plain between the Venetian lagoon, about 30 km south, and the foothills of the Alps rising 20 km to the north. It is close to both and looks like neither.

The defining feature is groundwater. This part of the plain is a fascia delle risorgive, a resurgence belt where water that sank into gravel beds up near the mountains comes back to the surface. The Sile begins that way and is one of the longest spring-fed rivers in Europe, which gives it a steady flow and a nearly constant temperature year-round.

Inside the walls, the Botteniga arrives from the north and is split into the Cagnan canals, which run between and sometimes underneath the buildings before rejoining the Sile at the southern edge. The fish market sits on an island in one of them, put there so the water would carry the waste away.

North of the city the ground rises into the Prosecco hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene -- steep, terraced and completely different country, twenty minutes away.